Title
'A Very Real Warmth'?: Hemingway and Michael Arlen
Document Type
Article
Annotation
Michael Arlen (1895-1956) was one of the most successful popular novelists of the 1920s. This essay examines his relationship with Ernest Hemingway on two levels, the literary and the biographical. Hemingway was alerted to Arlen's work by Scott Fitzgerald, and Hemingway's earliest reviewers assumed he owed a debt to Arlen. Hemingway denied any "influence." Similarities between The Sun Also Rises and Arlen's bestseller The Green Hat are examined. Arlen's (possibly) satirical jibes at Hemingway in his own fiction and Hemingway's racially inflected condescension towards Arlen call into question Arlen's son's claim of a "real warmth" between the two writers, who rarely met.
Published in
Hemingway Review
Volume
41
Issue
1
Date
Fall 2021
Pages
68-83
Citation
Ward, Philip. "'A Very Real Warmth'?: Hemingway and Michael Arlen." Hemingway Review 41, no. 1 (Fall 2021): 68-83.